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Higher bar for tech students to maintain grants

Posted: Saturday, March 12, 2011

By Lee Shearer

More than 10 percent of Georgia technical college students could lose the state aid that helps pay for their job training next year under changes in the lottery-funded program approved by the legislature.

The new rules require students to maintain a 3.0 GPA and are designed to rein in the rising cost of lottery-funded educational programs - the popular HOPE Scholarship for college students, the HOPE grant for vocational students and a statewide pre-kindergarten program.

Beginning this fall, it will be tougher for students to hang onto their HOPE grants beyond the first year of vocational training. For the first time, HOPE grant recipients will have to maintain a B average in their first year of study or lose eligibility.

If that rule had been in effect this year, nearly 15,000 students would have fallen below the cutoff for a second year of HOPE aid, according to Mike Light, a spokesman for the Technical College System of Georgia.

In fiscal 2010, about 15,000 students with at least 45 credit hours had grade point averages between 2.0 and 3.0 - passing, but not high enough to meet the new HOPE standard, Light said.

The 45-hour mark is students' first checkpoint for continuing HOPE grant eligibility. Those who make the 3.0 cut and hang on to HOPE will also have to pay about $720 more next year - the HOPE grant will only pay for 90 percent of tuition beginning next fall, and will no longer pay for books or for additional fees charged by colleges.

Many of the students who stand to get less HOPE aid or lose it entirely are poor or have lost jobs during the recession and are trying to re-enter the workforce, Light said.

"If you have been unemployed for 15 or 18 months, it becomes a lot of money, and that's what's facing a lot of our students," he said. "So many of them have come back to us because they have been affected by the economy, and are also trying to support families, pay mortgages and pay the bills."

About half the technical college system's overall enrollment of 191,000 students this year are classified as "economically disadvantaged" under federal rules, he said. More than 20,000 are single parents.

About 3,000 technical college students who already have a post-secondary degree also will lose their HOPE grant.

Technical college officials are looking for ways to help the thousands of students likely to be affected by the changes, especially those halfway to earning diplomas or degrees.

"Our college vice presidents of student affairs are meeting in the coming weeks, both to talk about possibly helping them find loans and just to examine ways to help them find ways to pay for their education," Light said.

Only two of the state's 26 technical colleges have loan programs for students now, but more may decide to begin helping students find loans , he said.

"We're going to be looking at that real hard in the coming weeks," he said.